Actually, Apple is being used in the enterprise more and more. Its a developer darling and because for a few good years now there's real Office for Mac and combined with very good MDM capabilities it stopped being a consumer device quite a while back.
developers are a very small group among "enterprise" customers. Ever seen a non-software company? Or maybe just look at what HR or sales people at your company use. More likely it's Windows rather than Mac.
While this is undoubtedly true, I still don't comprehend why.
The development workflow on linux is an order of magnitude better than on OSX. Package management is built into the distro, the directory structure is sane, LUKS is (probably) less likely to be backdoored by the NSA than FileVault, you can use keyboard-centric window managers, tiling window managers, etc, far more of the system is available/configurable via scripting or terminal, you don't get grey screens of death regularly, it doesn't send tons of telemetry back to the mothership, and you don't have to reset the PRAM and SMC every goddamn week just to get the thing to boot.
OSX is probably only a "good" comparative developer experience if you're forced to use XCode for something. Otherwise, it's a disaster.
> While this is undoubtedly true, I still don't comprehend why.
If you want to make ios apps you need an Apple computer. Then people get used to it and like most people they will say they prefer whatever they are used to.
I think you are basing this on your dislike of MacOS. And statements like "LUKS is (probably) less likely to be backdoored by the NSA than FileVault" will not win you any credibility points.
For developers, MacOS brings the UI friendliness of Windows with full capability of a *NIX machine. Basically you get the best of best worlds and with MDM capabilities on top which companies actually like and need very much.
>"While this is undoubtedly true, I still don't comprehend why."
If one develops apps for Apple ecosystem then it is must have. If not - I'd say it is a darling of some specific categories of users. Not your general developer.
Personally except couple of encounters I do not need to develop for Mac, hence I do not have it and could not care less if the brand disappears tomorrow. You can't really generalize here
Brew can be installed with one command and a couple minutes of waiting time.
> you don't get grey screens of death regularly [...] and you don't have to reset the PRAM and SMC every goddamn week just to get the thing to boot.
I've been using a Mac for a year now and I have no idea what you're talking about. So far it hasn't crashed once or had any other problems except for a few bugs in preinstalled applications.
I'm not saying it's better than Linux but everything is preconfigured well enough so I don't constantly get annoyed by about everything that comes out of the box. The terminal and browser work pretty much exactly the same on both operating systems. OSX isn't great but at least it's not Windows and the hardware is amazing.
For the past ten years I've worked at multiple companies where the engineers were issued Macs. We're talking about four companies and several hundred engineers in total.
And friend, this is nonsense right here:
you don't get grey screens of death regularly, [...]
and you don't have to reset the PRAM and SMC every
goddamn week just to get the thing to boot.
I don't know where you've been working or what the maniacs around you have been doing to your Macs, but I guess I worked with the luckiest ~250 Mac owners in the world because that stuff was not a thing for us.
I want my machine to just work, not being another programming environment and Macs give me that.
> you don't get grey screens of death regularly, it doesn't send tons of telemetry back to the mothership, and you don't have to reset the PRAM and SMC every goddamn week just to get the thing to boot.
I’ve been using Macs only for 5 years straight and have no idea what you’re talking about.
Also, shortcuts on Mac just make sense, unlike Windows and Linux.
Yes we all remember the Bill Gates hovering over Jobs event and the investment announcement and confirmation of Office for OS X. I think what the parent was referring to though is performance of macOS Office was trash until like Office 2016 or maybe Office 2019 (with multiple earlier hiccups along the way e.g. the delay on the x86 port etc.).
Imagine you're a car manufacturer. You are looking for a fast single-board computer with fast GPU for your FSD capabilities (say). The Apple Mini might fit the bill. How are you going to do this without rebranding everything about the Mini? You want the car to start up without the Apple logo on the screen, nor the Apple startup chime. Nor do you want system update notifications. Basically you want to remove the entire OS.
Replace car manufacturer by medical equipment manufacturer, etc.
It is general purpose computing from the perspective that a client company can build anything they want with it. Which is not true for Apple products. They are end user products aimed at the end consumer.
You are very wrong about this statement. You can't take a Dell/HP/Thinkpad laptop and transform it in the car multimedia device.
You are confusing computer parts with devices. Yes, it is true Apple won't sell you a CPU to put it on the motherboard of your choosing, but it is also true they don't operate in this market.
Feels like you really moved the goalposts a few times there within the same thread. Bit of a wild ride. First, you were talking about desktop users:
80% of worldwide desktop users are business users.
Then you moved on to:
general purpose computing
Which could mean a lot of things, but based on the context -- a thread about the latest chips that Intel has created for the desktop/notebook market -- it sure seemed like we were talking about that.
Now you've focused on a subset of general purpose computing: embedded computing options.
Well, you are correct. Apple, like many computer manufacturers and chip makers, does not compete in the embedded space. Seems like a curious thing to point out since nobody was talking about it and nobody was under any illusions that competes there but hey, you're right.
Can I play too? Apple does not compete in the toaster oven market. Apple does not compete in the inertial guidance systems market for cruise missiles. Apple does not manufacture sneakers. Look at me, being correct over here.
In a world where most of the applications people care about are SaaS, the OS is almost irrelevant to the user be he/she a business user or a consumer. There are a few exclusive applications with high user numbers on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh but the majority are available on all three, and those have far smaller numbers than SaaS applications delivered through the web browser.
Enterprise IT spending doesn't come from salaries. And either way, the size of an addressable market, is orthogonal to the existence of a market targeting or offerings. Market targeting and segmentation is more than just price.
Apple targets the premium consumer, SMB, and enterprise markets.
>Enterprise IT spending doesn't come from salaries.
But it's directly related. If you save money on salaries, you'll save money on IT equipment, office rent, perks, as well.
I've been working in central Europe for a decade and never worked at a compony offering Macs to its workforce. If you move to the super expensive cities, Munich, London, Stockholm, Amsterdam, etc, where wages are much higher, you'll start seeing more Macbooks being offered by emplyers because when you pay a single worker 100k/year and spend millions on your office building, what's another 3k/employee for a laptop? Peanuts. Similarly it's rare to see jobs paid 2k Euros/month but get a 3k Macbook from your employer.
Also depends how much profit they were making. If they made bank by underpaying you and overselling you to wealthy Amsterdam customers then they can probably afford Macs for everyone. Also depends on the type of work. Boring enterprise SW dev is usually ass Windows but frontend and mobile tends to be more Macs.
Macs are more expensive and that cost is often not worth it, but $3K?
For mundane business use we're talking about more like $1K (USD) for a Macbook Air versus roughly $700 for a halfway decent Dell.
Or then again... maybe $200 for a Chromebook is a better comparison, for companies that just want to give their employees a way to run web apps and check email.
Is $200 a good deal for that extra 8GB? Oh hell no. But we're still an extremely long way away from $3K as initially claimed and the idea of "basic" business users needing >8GB is pretty debatable.
This discussion is ridiculous. If somebody is going to claim that Product XYZ is overpriced but obviously had no idea what they're talking about and are objectively off by a factor of greater than 2x -- 130%! -- that's worth pointing out.
By the way. Looking at Dell's mainline 13" Latitude laptops with 16GB, guess what? They start at $1,065 and most of them are more than that.
I certainly do know you can certainly get a new Dell with 16GB for less, or even just buy a carload of old laptops from a local e-cycler for like $100 each and slap some DIMMs in them. I've done it. I mean I get it. I'm not saying everybody should roll out a fleet of Macs, I'm pointing out that it's not some totally outlandish thing that costs "$3K" per user.
I have no idea why you're being downcoted. Most people who buy Apple for their personal use buy it for the status.
It's really no big secret but of course HNers will love to think that technical merit plays a large role in their selection. The average Apple consumer does not care about the underlying hardware.
It is likely being poorly received because it is phrased as if it is suggesting a dichotomy that doesn't exist. Product perception and positioning almost always has multiple dimensions, and it certainly does in the case of choosing a computer. There are many differences between Apple computers and other brands, other than the name. I'll leave enumeration of that list to the reader, but you can choose any one of them, and people may make purchasing decisions based on them.
I think many buy Apple for status, they keep buying Apple because their products generally work better/with less hassle for regular people
who just need to accomplish tasks with their computers.
Unless you’re getting the really low-end android devices, you’re not saving much versus a comparable iPhone even before you account for the longer lifetime, and that’s for something you use many times a day, every day. If it’s a status symbol, it’s one of the most accessible in history - a Starbucks barista can have the same phone as their CEO for a few days’ pay, which certainly isn’t true of their food, shoes, clothing, car, or residence.
Apple makes consumer electronics.